The Co-Optimization of fuels and engines initiative aims to simultaneously develop novel high-performance fuels along with highly efficient engines to reduce petroleum consumption. For commercialization, novel fuels operating on the advanced engines must meet the stringent emissions regulations. Commercial three-way catalysts (TWC) are very effective at meeting the emissions regulations on pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), non-methane organic gases (NMOG) and carbon monoxide (CO) from gasoline fueled spark-ignition (SI) engines operating under stoichiometric conditions, when they are hot. Light-duty multimode engines operating under stoichiometric conditions (SI) during cold-start (and high loads), and lean conditions (Advanced Compression Ignition ACI) at low loads will continue to rely on TWCs for emissions control. When transitioning from SI to ACI mode, exhaust composition abruptly switches from stoichiometric to lean resulting in a rapid drop in exhaust temperature which makes emissions control challenging. As fuel chemistry significantly impacts temperatures at which TWCs are effective in reducing the emissions of the regulated pollutants, the current effort involves measuring impact of these novel fuels and selected fuel blends on TWC reactivity under lean conditions relevant to ACI. In the current study, prior to performance evaluation, a commercial three-way catalyst has been hydrothermally aged as per industry guidelines. A synthetic exhaust flow-reactor has been used to measure light-off and light-down temperatures of a wide range of fuels as per protocol set by industry. The influence of functional groups of the fuels such as alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, ketones, esters, and non-oxygenated aromatic hydrocarbons, on catalyst light-off temperature has been investigated. Impact of blending up to 30% of selected Co-Optima blendstocks in a surrogate BOB on TWC reactivity has also been studied.

Three-way catalyst reactivity of novel high-performance fuels for light-duty SI/ACI engine emissions control

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.